


Actions Louder

by Addison R (beyond_belief)



Category: Burnt (2015)
Genre: Apologies, Cooking, Food as a Metaphor for Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:27:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21787516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beyond_belief/pseuds/Addison%20R
Summary: Why say "I'm sorry" out loud when you could cook someone an apology meal instead? (Adam also does say it out loud.)
Relationships: Adam Jones/Montgomery Reece
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Actions Louder

**Author's Note:**

  * For [track_04](https://archiveofourown.org/users/track_04/gifts).



"What is this?" Reece demands, glaring at the plate Adam sets down in front of him. It's a white plate, square. On it is what looks like a sort of fattoush on one side, a smear of something pink, and then on the other side a tower of thinly-sliced lamb, some sort of yogurt sauce - or at least it looks like a yogurt sauce, with scattered mint leaves.

"A thank-you?"

"That much I understood." Reece turns his glare up over his shoulder and directs it at Adam. 

"Eat it, Montgomery."

"Fuck off, _Jones_." He takes the fork Adam holds out but doesn't drop the glare. Adam sits down in the chair across from him and folds his arms across his chest, sprawled out, watching Reese. Not for the first time, Reese contemplates throwing the plate at his head - he could likely aim at just the right angle to give Adam a very satisfying-looking black eye, and probably not a concussion. 

"You're fantasizing about hurting me," Adam says. 

"Yes."

"Do you enjoy that fantasy?"

"Yes." 

Adam grins at that. Reece tells him to fuck off once more, then puts fork to plate. It's as delicious as expected, although not very inspired. He says as much, after taking another bite of the lamb. "I didn't make it for the _menu_ ," Adam drawls. "I made it for you."

That gives Reece a moment's unexpected pause, which he resents but only briefly. "Well. My compliments to the chef."

"Thank you."

Reece finishes the fattoush, then sets the fork on the table. "Did you really think you could come back and make amends?"

"This isn't Paris," Adam says, but then he sighs and leans forward, his elbows on the table. "Which I am... sorry for, Monty. I was drunk and high and all kinds of things nearly every minute of the day, and I can't walk back the things I did. I'm not trying to make excuses -"

"Sounds like it," Reece says, as calmly as he's able.

"- I was an asshole and I understand that now."

Reece nudges the plate out of the way so he can rest his elbows on the table as well. Softly, he says, "You can't make up for it, Adam. There is no food you can cook for me that will take away what you did. I know you and Anne Marie were on probably six different things that night. But I wasn't. And you can't un-break someone's heart. You should know that by now."

Enough time has passed that he can say these things and not flinch as he speaks, not have to look away from Adam's face. In fact, he almost enjoys watching Adam's face. "Look," he murmurs. "I'm not out to make you feel bad, at least not today. But you need to know. None of us can be better if we don't understand the things we've done in the past."

"Yeah." Adam reaches across the table and pinches up a bit of lamb that Reece hadn't eaten. 

"So what now?"

"I thought dinner."

Reece gestures at the plate between them, although it's late enough now that it's closer to breakfast than to dinner. "You can't woo me with food."

"But I can say I'm sorry," Adam says, his voice soft, and from the look on his face, Reece knows he means it. 

"Fine. I'll give you that one." He gets up from the chair and reaches for his jacket. "My next day off is on Tuesday. Please try a bit harder."

The smile that breaks over Adam's face makes him look ten years younger, the Adam of old, the good parts of him. It makes something inside of Reece ache. This is such a bad idea. But he doesn't look away, and Adam says, "Tuesday. Did you want to come here?"

"Come to my flat. You'll have less to work with, it'll make it harder."

"Your flat."

"I'll text you the address," Reece says, and leaves. 

*

Reece removes two entire boxes of cookware from his kitchen before Adam arrives, just to be a jerk. He stows it in the hall closet. His kitchen looks almost frighteningly empty then, and it reminds him of the tiny corner he had to cook in at the flat in Paris, before he could afford whatever equipment his heart desired. Which reminds him of Paris in general, and he has to mentally close the door on that before he goes too far. 

Adam crashes in minutes later, his arms weighed down by full shopping bags. "What the fuck are you doing, it's only the two of us," Reece says as Adam piles his goods on the counter. 

"Go watch TV or something." Adam turns on the faucet and starts washing his hands. 

"I don't own a television."

"No wonder you're insufferable. You still don't need to be in my space."

Reece pulls out one of the stools that's on the living room side of the counter, and pointedly sits down on it. "It's my flat, darling," he says, solely to watch Adam's face. "And you're the one trying to cook his way back into my good graces."

Adam smiles at that, drying his hands on a towel that he then tucks into his waistband. His white t-shirt rucks up around it, a flash of skin that Reece has to look away from. Instead, he watches the material of the knife roll as Adam opens it. Jean-Luc's knives, worn and familiar. "What are you making?" 

"No questions," Adam says, fishing an onion from one of his plastic bags. 

Reece mimes locking his mouth with a key and tossing the key away, but it in the most sarcastic way he can possibly convey. Adam strips the skin from the onion and begins dicing it. "How'd you end up back in London?" he asks.

"Thought I wasn't supposed to speak," Reece says. Adam scrapes the onion into a bowl, points the tip of the knife at Reece, and takes out a bunch of carrots. "Oh, I can talk, but I just can't ask what you're cooking."

"Got it in one." Adam unbundles the carrots and slices off the tops in what's almost one single move. Reece always did love to watch him work, even when Adam was high all the time and there was a general worry that he'd lose, at minimum, a fingertip. Reece can remember a few close calls. "So, London?"

"Well, after you fucked it all up, I felt like it was time to come home." Home was actually Wrexham, nearly four hours from London, but he hasn't lived in Wales since he was a teenager. "I took a sous chef job at a place in Kensington - two weeks later I was head chef. After that, I stopped thinking about what I might be missing in Paris."

"And?"

"And what?"

"What did you cook, at this place in Kensington?" Adam finishes with the carrots and moves on to a net bag of small purple potatoes. 

"French," Reece replies, thinking that should have been a given. "It's what we know, isn't it?"

"I thought I did." He nudges the faucet on again and begins scrubbing off the potatoes. "Then I got here and found out everyone was running wild science experiments."

"People like it when you do things they know, but in a new way."

"Put some foam on it, you mean."

Reece frowns at him. "Not just _put some foam on it_ , Christ's sake, Adam."

A sly smile pulls at Adam's mouth. "Cherry foam."

"It went alongside a pineapple cake, and a nearly burnt caramel." He reaches over the counter for the coffee he'd left alone when Adam rang the bell. It's cooled, but it's still drinkable, although right now he'd actually like a cup of tea. "Adam. Put the kettle on for me."

"You made a bourgeois pineapple upside-down cake," Adam mutters, then laughs. "Fuck." 

He does plug the kettle in, though, before dropping the potatoes into the single sauce pan Reece left out - now full of boiling water, then rifling through his collection of grocery bags once more. The cut of meat he unwraps is dark. Reece raises his eyebrows. "Venison, really? Rustic."

"Good, that's what I was going for."

"You, aim for rustic?"

"We're not at a restaurant right now," Adam points out, as though Reece needs to be reminded that he's sitting at his own kitchen counter, wearing joggers and a robe, letting Adam Jones cook his way back into Reece's life. 

*

"Okay, this is getting to be a habit," is what Reece says, when Adam shows up at the restaurant after close, "and I already had my evening meal, so no, you can't cook another apology right now."

"I just brought snacks," Adam replies guilelessly, and holds up a bag. It's shiny with oil stains.

He's brought a dozen tiny spring rolls, still hot and crisp, so obviously from somewhere between his restaurant and Reece's. From his pocket he retrieves a handful of mass-produced duck sauce packets in all their off-pink glory. 

"If I didn't know better, I'd say you almost want to be my friend," Reece murmurs, and fetches them little prep bowls to squeeze the sauce into. They eat standing up at the pass, only a few of the lights on, barely speaking. Reece feels as though the oil has soaked into his fingertips by the time he's finished his share. 

Adam licks duck sauce from where he's somehow gotten it on the back of his hand, then looks at Reece and asks, "Can I kiss you?"

"The fact that you're asking permission is - novel."

"I am _asking_ because I don't want to fuck it all up again."

Reece wants to fold his arms over his chest, a protective stance, but he doesn't. He stays where he's at, one hip hitched up on the gleaming workspace. "And what about your chef de partie, that little blonde you brought to my soiree?"

"We decided it - well, not that it was a bad idea, that's got connotations, but more like there were other things we both needed to worry about first. And you know, I actually like just being Helene's friend. Which probably sounds fucking weird, coming from-"

Reece grabs Adam's face with slick fingers and kisses him. "What the fuck is it about you that nobody can get over?" he murmurs, close to Adam's salty-sweet mouth, not expecting the question to have an answer. "I'd tell you to go home and think twice about this except I know you're still crashing at the Langdon, so come on. You can come back to mine."

"Really?"

"Don't talk in the car, lest you fuck it all up."

Adam grins. He squeezes Reece's hip through his whites. "How far is your flat from here?"

"Ten minutes." If he drives the limit.

Surprisingly, Adam behaves in the car, keeping his hands to himself and his mouth mostly shut. He does point out all the takeaway shops he's tried that he sees along the way. "That place is good," he says, pointing at a building Reece doesn't even bother trying to look at. "They do a pizza with Asian-spiced chicken on it, corn, jalapenos, and mushrooms."

"People will eat anything on a pizza these days." Reece turns the car 'round a corner, then risks a glance at Adam. "Tell me you're putting pizza on your menu."

"God, you're insufferable," Adam groans, but he smiles as he says it, stretching as much as he can manage in the passenger seat of Reece's small car. 

A minute later, Reece is touching the button that lifts the door to the carpark. He steers the car inside. "Come on."

Adam tries to kiss him right when they get into the flat, and Reece pushes him away with a hand to his chest. "I'm sure you've learned some self control," he says, as mildly as he's able. 

"Some." A hesitant look - slight, but it's there - crosses Adam's face. "You know I don't remember most of what happened that night, right?"

"I figured as much." Reece hangs up his jacket on the rack, strips Adam's from his body without asking permission. "You want a… water? Juice, something?"

"No, I'm fine."

"Suit yourself then." He gets himself a bottle of water. Watches Adam glance around the kitchen, sees his gaze pause on the juicer and high-speed blender. Waits.

"You withheld things from me," Adam says.

"I did."

Adam puts a hand over his heart and mimes devastation. 

"Would you please go upstairs and take your clothes off," Reece says.

"Sure." Adam pulls his t-shirt up over his head, then walks towards the stairs, the shirt loose in one hand. 

*

Reece sits down on the edge of his bed. "Well?" He gestures in the vague direction of his lap. "Make it up to me."

Adam looks at him with an unreadable expression for a moment, then slides to his knees. Reece catches his chin and asks, "Do you really not remember that night?"

"Flashes of it." Adam turns his head, just slightly, and offers a soft apologetic bite to Reece's thumb. "Tell me?"

"Maybe if you get to work."

"God, you're a douche," Adam says, and undoes Reece's slacks. " _Monty_."

"Not even my mother calls me that." He pushes a hand into Adam's hair, pulls because he can. "You were sloppy drunk but you could still get it up, and I was young. And stupid." 

He means of course, that he was still young enough to be that stupid, that naive; he means he's not that man any longer. "I let you fuck me. I think maybe you meant to make it good, but..."

Adam leans in and rubs his cheek over Reece's cock through his shorts. It feels good, and Reece catches his breath despite himself. 

Adam says, "But it wasn't."

"Mm, it felt great, until you came. And Anne-Marie brought herself off; watching, I suppose. And you passed out in each other's arms and left me, still hard, still wanting." He pauses. "I felt quite inadequate."

"You definitely don't feel inadequate to me," Adam says, with a slow drag of his palm over Reece's cock, before he tugs at the waistband of Reece's shorts. He looks up, and his gaze is clear. "How about I make it up to you?"

"Thought I told you to do that already." Reece lifts his hips, letting Adam divest him of his trousers and shorts in a few short moves. Then Adam pushes his knees apart again and breathes hot and damp over Reece's erection. 

Reece cups his cheek. "I feel like it'd be stupid of me to let you fuck me again, but truth be told, I want it. I wanted it the second you showed your smug fucking face in this town. I really am an idiot."

"No." Adam opens his mouth for Reece's cock then, warm and wet, slow and deliberate. Reece breathes in hard through his nose at the sensation.

"No, you're not going to fuck me, or no, I'm not an idiot?" It's a difficult question to ask while someone's sucking your dick.

Adam pulls off, but curls his hand lazily around Reece's length, stroking. "Guess," he says, then mouths wetly over the head, making Reece shudder and moan. He can feel all the places that are starting to sweat, even the backs of his knees, there's a low buzz in his ears. He feels like he can't breathe without a thousand embarrassing noises escaping his mouth.

He pushes at Adam's face after another minute or so. "You've made your point here, come on."

Adam makes a dissatisfied noise and doesn't stop for another few seconds. Not that Reece can really keep count; he's mostly curling his fist into the sheets and breathing shallowly through his mouth. 

"All right, get up on the bed, come on," Adam says, squeezing his thigh none too gently. "I assume you've got lube, if you've been thinking about this."

Reece leans over and gets the bottle and a condom from the bedside table. The condom he drops on the extra pillow, the lube he hands to Adam. He watches Adam wet his fingers. "Ready?" Adam asks, and Reece spreads his legs in answer. 

The first touch makes him tense, an instinct soon overridden. The second and third touches make him want to roll his hips, keep Adam's fingertips rubbing against his asshole. "This is such a terrible idea," he groans, even as Adam presses forward, gets first one finger inside, then two. Reece feels hot all over. More sweat. He wonders if he could make Adam feel this way, were their positions reversed.

"You'll forgive me if I close my eyes," he says.

"Whatever you want to do." Adam's fingers twist and slide, and Reece bites back another embarrassing moan. "How should we do this, huh? I feel like you'd rather not look me in the face."

Reece laughs at that, even as he rocks against Adam's hand, chasing every spark that runs up his spine. Eventually he manages to say, "If I'm choosing, I want to be on top."

"Yeah." Adam nods, too quickly. His face is as flushed as Reece feels his own is, and a glance downward reveals his cock is straining against his briefs. "Yeah."

"Get your damned shorts off, you idiot." He pushes one hand against Adam's arm, breathing out heavily when Adam withdraws his fingers. He stays where he is for a few seconds to watch Adam push his briefs down and kick them away, rolls over nearly to the edge of the bed so Adam can stretch out in the middle. "Fuck, how are you in such great shape?"

"I run."

Reece allows a disgusted noise at that, then straddles Adam's thighs. Adam looks up at him, appraising. "You're not in bad shape yourself, Monty."

"If you call me that while we fuck, I will hurt you," Reece warns, but his entire body is running hot now, nearly vibrating in anticipation, and he probably coudn't hurt anyone in this state even given a good reason. And Adam's smug face doesn't count as a good reason at the moment, so he just grabs the condom from the pillow and rips it open. 

"You want me to jerk you off during, or…" Adam trails off, rubbing his hand over Reece's thigh.

"Stop talking." It requires more concentration than Reece expects to roll the condom down over Adam's cock, and he takes his time besides, teasing just to watch Adam's face change. Then the hand on his thigh squeezes nearly hard enough to hurt. He looks at Adam's face, sees him looking at Reece's cock. 

"Try not to move," he warns, getting up on his knees. 

He's slick enough that working himself down onto Adam's cock is no great difficulty, other than how it feels so good his head spins and he wants to just leans forward and kiss Adam messily for at least the next five minutes. Maybe ten. Kiss him until he can't breathe, as payback. 

Instead he gives his body the few seconds he knows it needs, his head lolling forward, barely aware of how hard he's squeezing the muscle of Adam's shoulder. His thighs are already burning. "This is such a terrible idea."

Adam's expression is glazed over with pleasure, and his sweat-damp hand clutches at Reece's hip. "Uh-huh. Would you fucking move?"

"Shut up." 

*

Reece is alone in the bed when he wakes. He stretches an arm out, feels the dip where Adam had been. Then he rolls over onto his back and sniffs. Coffee. Something baking. Cinnamon and vanilla, sugar - obviously sugar. Adam must be downstairs. Even he wouldn't leave the oven on.

The clock reads quarter past seven in the morning. He gets out of bed and pulls on his robe, and sticks his feet in his slippers. Various places are sore, he notes, but not in a bad way.

The downstairs of his flat smells even more of something sweet. Adam's sitting on one of the stools, reading a newspaper, drinking from a mug. Reece's French press is on the counter half-full. "It's still hot enough," Adam says, not looking up from whatever article he's reading. 

"Good morning," Reece replies. He ducks in to kiss Adam's neck, and applies his teeth.

Adam's hand slides over his thigh. "I suppose it must be." 

"What's in my oven?"

"Just a few muffins. Should be done in a minute."

"Ah." He pours a mug from the press, breathes in the scent. "What did you add? Cinnamon?"

"And cardamom. To match." He squeezes Reece's thigh again, but leisurely, without any real intent. 

"And are you leaving before these so-called muffins are even done baking?"

"No." Adam sounds confused, looking up from the newspaper. His gaze is clear and awake. "Do I look dressed to leave?"

Reece realizes Adam's wearing a pair of his own pyjama bottoms with the t-shirt he had on last night. "I suppose not."

The timer buzzes and Adam gets up, elbowing Reece out of his way. Reece steals his seat and watches Adam take the tin from the oven from over the rim of his mug. The tops of the muffins appear to have pecans. "I'm fairly certain there were no pecans anywhere in my cupboards."

"I ran down to that shop that's on the corner." He gestures in what Reece figures is the direction of the shop. "You were out of milk."

"You went down there in pyjamas and what, your boots?"

"And my jacket. I doubt they noticed." With quick fingers, he plucks the hot muffins from the tin and sets them on a rack to cool. "You've only got enough butter left for us to eat these, though, I didn't buy more of that."

"I'm disappointed," Reece deadpans. "You're terrible at domestic chores. How have you managed to live by yourself for years, et cetera." He fishes a cigarette from the nearly empty pack on the counter and lights up. He hasn't smoked heavily in years, but he always needs one in the morning, and almost always after dealing with Adam. 

"You want one?" he mumbles around the smoke.

"Nah." Adam picks up his coffee and stands drinking it with his back to the counter's edge. 

Reece has his cigarette, then looks over the paper, but it's all garbage as usual. Adam takes a knife from the silverware drawer and nudges over the butter dish before dropping a muffin in front of Reece. They're still hot, but not hot enough to burn the mouth. The crust of sugar produces a satisfying crunch. 

"I should probably go," Adam says, when the butter dish is empty. "Duty calls and all that." 

"Might want to put your actual trousers on first." 

"Yes, you're very funny." He slides over, works his body between Reece's knees. The corner of his mouth looks slick with butter. 

"There's a Tube stop if you walk about two minutes west," Reece continues, putting a hand on Adam's ass and squeezing, hard enough that Adam jolts against him. Reece grins. "And remember the station, will you? I think I'm due at least a half-dozen more apology dinners."

**Author's Note:**

> As I mentioned in the notes to [Adam Jones at the Langham](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21769690), I'd never watched this movie until it was in track_04's letter and I figured I'd watch it. Then I realized a large portion of it is my favorite AO3 tag, "food as a metaphor for love" and now it's one of my favorites.


End file.
